Crimes of Passion. I used to peruse used book stores attracted to titles around this topic. Having used up my ability to intellectually dissect any and all relationships, I had found myself fascinated by instances in which people simply lost their bearings due to love or jealousy or an overriding sense of justice that perhaps didn't fit in with anyone else's ideas, or even, up until their breaking point, their own.
Not only was I fascinated, I was mesmerized, completely dumbfounded by the illogical, irrational and messy emotional blizzard that people, myself included, experienced particularly when it came to love and sex.
I was experienced with the ways of the therapy trade; understood terminology and pathology, repression and projection, narcissism and being on the borderline, abandonment issues and low self esteem. But irrational passion was a different animal and something I wasn't sure could really ever be explained.
The fact that the media has such a field day with it is partly a reflection of how badly we all want to see others in the throes of irrational passion and how confused all of us, all humans, really are. It's easy to pass judgement on others and makes us feel safe, smug, morality in tact, chin up, vows forever, stability rigidity and honesty, integrity, goodness, etc - it's what most of us, at least up front, strive for.
But it is possible for good, caring and otherwise morally sound people to fall in love and completely lose their minds. Sometimes it's lust, or sex addiction, or a whole host of other pathologies that can cause them to seek out dangerous or unstable situations; abandonment issues that cause them to find validation over and over in unhealthy ways.
But sometimes it's just inexplicable. The mystery of our irrational passion is one of the last mysteries left to us as people, and hence, I believe, our insatiable thirst to figure it out and watch its patterns played out; sometimes artfully and poignantly and sometimes with incomprehensible baseness.
How can checkbook-balancing, neighborhood-caring, middle -of-the-night parenting people consider throwing away their fifteen-year relationship for a fantasy of being wrapped in the arms of someone else, someone new, someone they are irrationally passionate about, someone who also has bad days and foul moods, and issues and dry skin?
Making the choices that aren't just about our passions but are about those in our lives we love is part of what maturity is all about. One of the hallmarks of adulthood is sticking by commitments, following through, taking and maintaining responsibility and not giving in to irrational passions that tempt you into throwing your life and the lives of those around you, into the depths of the ocean of emotion.
Observe your passions and let them go. After all, you can feel your feelings without acting them out. You can read and write about passion without destroying the lives of those around you. And perhaps a good book and a box of tissues is healthier than a hotel room if you really think about it.
Aimee Boyle lives and loves in CT with a bunch of cozy male mammals. She contributes regularly to EmpowHER on the topics of health, relationships and sexuality.